Introducing CCIE #24347!!!

Yes, it's official!!!! After a grueling 9 hour wait, most of which was in my
hotel room here in Raleigh, I just got my score report, and I am officially
CCIE #24347!!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! The greatest 5 #'s I have ever heard! Keep
in mind, that I am 5.5 beers in at this point as I decided around 10:30 that
no matter what I was having a 6 pack for my troubles hehe. So what can I say?
I guess I will give you my experience today and a little bit about my
preparation.

I flew into Raleigh Sunday afternoon, and stayed at the Wingate. The Wingate
came highly recommended by the many that have gone before me, and they were
right on. I can't recommend it enough. They picked me up at the airport, and
took me right to the hotel. When I inquired about where I could walk to pick
up some redbull for the lab the next day, they DROVE ME to the nearest gas
station like it was just normal. I guess that is the southern love...being
from Detroit, I'm not used to that sort of thing hehe. When I was picked up at
the airport I was told I was the 3rd CCIE candidate being picked up that
day...they knew exactly what I was there for, and exactly what to do.

The lab started at 7:15, and I was told the shuttle from the hotel to Cisco
would leave about 6:30, giving us plenty of time. I woke up at 6:00 AM, threw
on my jeans and T-shirt (opted against the sweatpants!!!), grabbed my 3 large
size redbulls from the fridge and headed down to the hotel breakfast area. I
was too nervous to eat a thing. I chatted up the other 2 candidates staying
there and passively sipped a cup of coffee. The other 2 guys were doing voice,
so there wasn't really much to talk about. The shuttle drove us over to Cisco
and we were there by 6:45...in total there were about 6 of us waiting
outside...it was the most awkward thing EVER....after some brief introductions
by a few of us, it was DEAD SILENCE for 30 minutes as we stood outside and
waited for the proctor to show up. Our proctor pulled in about 7:10, and took
us into the lobby where we were ID'd and given our temp stickers and rack
numbers. The proctor gave us all the regular instructions and told us
basically where the bathrooms and drinks were, and gave us the general rules
of the lab (get rid of any macros at the end of the day, save your configs
often, etc...).

I sat down at my pod and started in on the OEQ ... the first one threw
me....it seemed very simple. All I can say without breaking NDA is that it was
some command output and a diagram, and I couldn't place the answer... I gave
it my best shot and moved on. The other 3 questions were no problem at all,
although later in the day I feared I might have messed up the wording of one
of them....all in all it took me about 5 minutes. Guys, after reading all the
posts and fear regarding this I have to say, IF you have studied properly,
there is nothing to fear!!!

I moved on to the lab just like I would any other mock lab I've been doing for
10 months....followed the method Jared Scrivener gave us at IPexpert bootcamp,
which was AWESOME. Yes, I read the entire lab first, which was a good thing,
because there were things towards the end that definitely effected how I did
other tasks. I made a list of tasks, point values, and notes for every task. I
redrew the diagram...I made 1 diagram with all my L3 and IGP information. The
BGP diagram they provided was sufficient enough for me, and I didn't feel the
need for a seperate switching diagram. Having initially read through the lab,
I felt pretty good. There were only 2 things I had not done before...it was
just a matter of implementing all the things I had learned and practiced time
and time again, and making sure to pay special attention to detail.

I was not going for speed...I knew one of my weakest areas was not paying
attention to detail enough, so I took my sweet time. I knew I had good speed
coming in and I'd likely have plently of time.

Just as the proctor called lunch (11:15) I was starting in on multicast and
had full IP reachability, so was feeling pretty good. My personal experience
on the point system was that all my points added up to 80. At lunch time I had
42 points and was feeling pretty damn good. Lunch was basically silent....they
had a pretty decent tasting chicken contraption with soda, water, and salad.
It was pretty good. I was actually so juiced up on redbull and coffee that it
didn't really matter, as long as it was food : ) We had to wait through the
whole lunch time that was allotted to us. Actually, the proctor let us start
working 5 minutes earlier, noting to everyone that we would lose 5 minutes at
the end, which I found fair. I approached the proctor more than anybody else
in the lab...probably about 4 times. Guys, you are paying $1400 for his time,
do not be ashamed!!! Most of my questions were just verification of things to
be 110% sure of what they were asking!

Later in the day I felt a bit less confident, as I hit my weaker areas (QoS,
Multicast)... I felt 75% sure on about 75% of these tasks....maybe 85%
sure...like you know you are right or very close to right, but the kind of
thing where you want to look at the solutions guide to double check yourself.
No solutions guide today gentlemen : ) I completed all the tasks by about 2:00
and started verification, which was SOOOOO important to my success I can't
even explain! I went through task by task and did the appropriate show
commands to prove I had done it right. What I found was suprising. It is a
little unnerving to have already marked down points and with 90 minutes to go
find you have one section broken completely, and a routing loop somewhere else
, as well as about 3 other stupid minor mistakes. Had it not been for
verification I don't know if I would have made it out OK. I wasn't in it for
speed...I stayed until they called time verifying and reverifying with my
trusty TCL scripts. At 3:28 the proctor told us we had 2 minutes left and to
save our configs, remove any macros and TCL scripts (which I don't get because
TCL scripts are not saved), return all the devices to priv exec mode and
reboot our PCs. I found it a bit alarming that they didn't say something like
"OK you have 30 minutes left" but just like that BAM , OK you are DONE in 2
minutes! Oh well...I got about 75% through re-checking everything.

I counted up about 68/80 points I thought I had for sure....and I had about 8
points "on the fence" that I just wasn't sure about...so I felt pretty good
walking out. I felt like I probably had a good shot at it.

The worst part of my entire day was the waiting game...I am staying the night
here in Raleigh, and have no car and nothing to do...I coudn't sleep, I
couldn't eat much...I pain stakingly sat here refreshing my email and watching
TV for about 4 hours....finally I decided to go take a walk. I walked about a
half mile to a gas station and bought a 6 pack of beer while listening to the
new Dylan album on my iPod. When I got back I killed some time talking to a
friend on the phone....right before he hung up the email came in...I checked
it live on the phone. I HAD PASSED!!! CCIE #24347! Obviously, I couldn't even
describe how I felt, but it was a great experience to share with a friend!

Wow this is getting long, so let me tell you a bit about my preparation. I am
a straight forward kind of guy and I am not on here to promote any company
over another, just to tell you my experiences. As far as vendors go, I uses
STRICTLY the workbooks and blended learning solution from IPEXPERT. Their
blended learning solution came with all 3 of their workbooks (1 technology
focuses, and 2 workbooks of full scale labs), as well as the full Scott Morris
Video On Demand / Audio on Demand series (When Scott was still with IPexpert.)
This was my bread and butter guys. I passed my written at the end of July,
2008 and immediately started on the material. I read most of the usual
recommended books cover to cover, and really tried to grasp the concepts...I
went through the entire video on demand, and listened to the audio portion
countless times. In fact, my wife even does here Scott Morris impersonation
now : ) Thats how you know you have a keeper hehe....Anyways, I worked through
these labs with all my heart and soul for 10 months. I got involved in the
various communities, and I can't say enough about them. Groupstudy
especially...there are so many guys on here that you can learn from, it is
just awesome!

Just when I thought I was ready, I booked an IPexpert 5 day instructor led
bootcamp just to touch up my weak areas and hope that it would be mostly
review and a confidence builder. I did this 2 weeks before my lab date, and it
was well worth it. You can read my review of that that I posted earlier as
well. Jared Scrivener was our instructor and he was at the top of his
game...just a really great experience for me.

Going into the lab I felt confident...coming out of the lab I can honestly say
I was exteremely well prepared.

And now the obligatory thank you section : )

Big thanks goes out to -- Scott Morris -- Dude, no matter what shirt you were
wearing you were ALWAYS willing to help me with my issues, and I can't say
enough about how much I appreciate that. Weather it was a question on a lab
you had authored at previous jobs, or an annoying IOS bug I was struggling
with, you helped me. Even when you had moved on professionally, you gave me
honest and productive support. Yes, your voice is forever etched in my brain
from the VoD and we know you don't pay for therapy!!!

Huge thanks to Jared Scrivener, Tyson Scott, Mike Down, Sean Orr, Wayne Lawson
and the ENTIRE IPexpert team, who have been with me from start to finish.
These guys have been just awesome...from Mike and Sean in sales, to Tyson and
Jared with the technical material. It's been a fun and good experience! I got
what I expected -- world class training, support, and customer service, and
THAT is hard to find these days! A special thanks personally to Jared for his
excellent teaching methods, and willingness to go the extra mile time and time
again, and for giving his students personal 1-1 support!

Huge thanks to cciejourney, the guy that runs our blog at sunpenguin.net!
Carl, I couldn't have done it without you buddy, and you WILL get your digits
soon man! We will all still be here pulling for you, and don't forget it! Carl
was nice enough to give me a login here, and a place to dump my thoughts.

Group Study and the OSL -- You guys have been my life for the past 10
months...I'd read the threads every day, and hopefully I helped a few people
along the way. It is so awesome to have a community of people just like me,
willing to help just because well, we love it and enjoy giving back to the
community. Special thanks to Scott, Narbik, Anthony, Petr, and so many others
that have chimed in. Bryan B, who achieved his CCIE # just a month or so
before me...we were study partners and bounced things off each other all the
time...good times! Thanks to everybody that helped me along directly or
indirectly weather I mention you by name or not.

Last but certainly not least, my family and friends for their unwavering
support over the past 10 months and ESPECIALLY my new beautiful wife Beth. I
know everybody says this and I know when I read these threads it was usually
the part I said "yeah right" and moved on but seriously...they have given up
SO much to support me and let me pursue my dream. There were many times I had
to come home from work, eat dinner, and by 6:00 PM tell my wife goodnight, I
won't see you until tomorrow after work because I have to study 6:00 - 2:00
tonight, or do a mock lab, or read the docCD or whatever...to my friends,
congratulations I am back : ) I have not had time to do many of the things I
used to like to do lately, and now I am looking forward to hanging out more.

I guess thats it guys...I know this was long, and thansk for anything that got
through the whole thing...this whole post is sort of stream of consiousness at
this point. The CCIE is doable, but like many before me have said, you have to
seriously want it, and put in the time, effort, and sacrifice to achieve it.

- Joe Astorino, CCIE #24347

"He not busy being born is busy dying" -- Dylan

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Received on Tue May 12 2009 - 05:42:31 ART